"There was upon a time ... "
-- Dixon de Geere, age 2
Alone in the living room with a book, and fully believing she was actually reading to her toys, my 2-year-old granddaughter unknowingly summed up our human relationship with wild animals pretty well as she began her story, "There was upon a time." Yes, I thought, we really are now upon a very precarious time when elephants and tigers, lions and whales, gorillas and ivory-bills, alligators and rhinos, polar bears and fishes, wolves and wolverines, bees and butterflies are all struggling to live their lives in the places they were meant to inhabit and to fulfill their roles in those ecosystems.
Our own is a strange species. Mark Twain remarked that, "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or that needs to." And I would guess we are also the only animal species that includes individuals who need to kill, behead and display their grisly mementos on the walls of their homes and businesses. This is something weird about our species I simply do not comprehend, so if anyone could explain trophy hunting to me, I'd greatly appreciate it. My fall-back analogy when characters like the American dentist, Dr. Walter Palmer, who spent upwards of $50,000 for guides to provide him with a lion to kill with his bow, has been that these hunters are suffering from a testosterone deficit, and big game hunting gives them the booster they need to feel manly. Of course, since some women are also trophy hunters, maybe that blows that theory.
Another possibility for blood lust is scorecard competition. Hunters strive to knock off certain animals as proof of something -- perhaps their daring, their aim, their risk, or their financial finesse to afford this type of "fun." In Africa, for example, the Big Five marketed by safari operators, are the African lion, leopard, elephant, the Cape Buffalo and the white/black rhinoceros because supposedly these are the hardest to hunt on foot.
Since assuring a kill is job security for guides, sometimes animals are baited, lured, tricked, stalked, hounded by dogs and even flushed and followed by vehicles and aircraft before being killed with high-tech weaponry, practices that vary as legal or illegal from place to place. Whatever methods are used, these "most dangerous" creatures to hunt are up against tremendous odds in a human-created sport. To make matters worse, the more rare and endangered animals become, the more killers will pay poachers to find them.
Animals kill for food, territory, domination of gene line, and to defend offspring, but only humans seem to kill and waste life for entertainment. Animals don't know they are contenders in a game, or even that they are game, or what a game is, so that hardly makes them "fair" game, does it?
When Cecil the Lion was shot by Palmer last month after being baited out of the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, Africa, a face and story were finally put on a member of big-game trophy animals, and international outrage ensued. Cecil's death has now left his pride and cubs endangered without their primary protector (one cub has already been killed by a new male). Hopefully his death might signal a human turning point that allows living things to serve as targets or merchandise for human egos.
Elephants are being killed by the thousands for their ivory, rhinos for their horns, gorillas for their hands and feet, and countless other creatures for their skins, feathers, shells, teeth, fur, heads, and even their babies. And, a percentage caught for zoos and the exotic animal trade dies in the capturing process or in captivity. None of this loss of life is necessary to physically support humans with food or shelter. No human will go without any necessity if this killing were to miraculously cease.
It is argued that hundreds of safari and hunting guides support their families with their jobs of supplying wildlife to "harvest" for whatever excuse. They could be retrained as wildlife caregivers instead of life-takers and still have jobs if societies placed value on animal life instead of animal death.
As I listened to her little voice say, "There was upon a time," I grieved knowing my grandchild will someday realize the animals that lived in our world when she was 2 became extinct before she got to show them to her children. Such creatures will truly be mythical wonders that lived only once upon a time.
Fran Alexander is a Fayetteville resident with a longstanding interest in the environment and an opinion on almost anything else. Email her at [email protected].
Commentary on 08/18/2015